Hellcannon Aral'vakran

Such is the vanity of Elazar that trophies are taken from all his victories, no matter their size or manner.
Aral'vakran was a rival Daemon Prince of Slaanesh who competed with Elazar for their god's favour. The Daemons' respective followers waged war upon one another and once the Devotees of Elazar had establish the upper hand the two immortal beings clashed in combat. Elazar bested Aral'vakran and bound the Daemon within a small trinket box.
Decades passed by and Elazar, courting the Dwarven Daemonsmith Vogner Ungart, gave the bound Daemon Prince as a gift in exchange for the dwarf's servitude.
Once more Aral'vakran marches at the head of armies but now, instead, as a bound slave. Deep inside the cannon bearing his name lies the same trinket box striving to contain its prisoners rage within the warmachine, all the while Elazar watches in amusement.









I know only the crew picture and background is new but this is the completed Hellcannon so just wanted a post to tie everything together!

Amador

Whilst working on Vela I made use of the leftover greenstuff to do some more work on Amador who's been a little neglected as of late. Very poor pics I'm afraid and an awful lot of work to do still but gives you an idea of what I have planned. He's going to be a lot more flamboyant yet though. I'm thinking of giving him three trailing penants kind of like the Green Knight amongst other things!
Ignore the base, just the first one I found lying around to tac him on to!

Vela The Performer, The Mad Puppeteer, Sorcerer of Elazar

A special treat for you. I figured I'd let you see the first draft of this character.

Once a great performer in the Altdorf theatre, his true name since forgotten. He possessed some magical talent that charmed the minds of his audience in a harmless way, indeed he knew not of this gift of his. Like all performers he had many patrons in the nobility, it was the way of the rich to try and enhance their standing by supporting the arts. This one performer though had a patron of a different nature altogether.
One night after a grandiose performance of a play entitled ‘The Merchant of Marienburg’ the performer returned to his quarters to find all the usual lavish gifts left for him by his supporters. Amongst them was a curious glass case within which stood a scarecrow marionette. Intrigued the performer reached into the case and picked out the strange puppet.
The next day he did not show up for the play and when the angry theatre owner went to his quarters to rebuke the performer he found a scene of devastation. Untouched in the destruction of the quarters was a glass case and next to it a card signed ‘Elazar’.

The performer next turned up deep in the northern wastes where he’d wandered aimlessly until he was picked up by a Diatchi raiding party who took him captive. As is the way of the Diatchi and most of the other Kurgan races they made some of their captives fight to the death. Those they deemed blessed by the gods were spared and given a new life amongst the tribes. So it would be for this man as Elazar had developed a great love of his star performer and would see no harm come to him. He slaughtered a number of stronger slaves, showing a startling sorcerous ability that earned him the fear and respect of the tribesmen. They spared his life and he took the name Vela. It soon became clear that he was inseparable from the strange marionette that he carried with him. He spoke to the puppet and often fought with it. Worse for the tribesmen he often embarked upon strange performances for their ‘enjoyment’ sharing the lead roles with the being of wood and string that accompanied him. However, when at war he proved to be an invaluable ally. The puppet seemingly a focus for his power and his sorcery. Capable of controlling the minds of his enemies and making them do his bidding; his brand of warfare has proven invaluable in the wastes. An insane megalomaniac and egoist, Vela is now a favoured servant of Elazar and his presence can be found alongside the champions that his daemonic patron favours at that time.

Special Rules
Eye of the Gods

Sorcerer of Elazar: Vela is a Level 2 Sorcerer who chooses his spells as normal from the Lore of Slaanesh. His Mark makes him Immune to Pyschology.

Daemonic Patron: Elazar still watches over Vela, taking great interest in his career and keeping him from harm. Vela is immune to Killing Blow and Poisoned Attacks.

Insane Puppeteer: The Northmen respect Vela's power and know that he is truly loved by Elazar but an insane southman with a puppet doesn't inspire their confidence. Friendly models can never take advantage of Vela's leadership even if he is the army general.

Magic Items
The Marionette: This scarecrow marionette was given to Vela as a gift by his patron Elazar. The marionette is a focus for Vela's sorcerous power and a tool for his power of manipulation. The marionette has its own cruel intentions though and longs to break free of its controller. Indeed, at times the puppets will wrestles with Vela's, trying to reverse their roles and trap Vela within the confines of wood and strings. The puppet allows Vela to add D3 to his casting roll once per turn. This cannot cause a miscast or irresistible force. However the malevolent spirit of the marionette attempts to assume control and Vela must test for stupidity in his next turn whilst puppet and master battle wits.
The puppet also allows Vela to modify any rolls on the miscast table made by any wizard on the battlefield. Vela can modify the result up or down by up to the result of D3. This doesn't cause Vela to have to test for stupidity in his next turn.

Vela The Performer, The Mad Puppeteer, Sorcerer of Elazar
195pts

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld
Vela	4	5	3	4	4	2	5	2	8

Equipment: Hand Weapon, Chaos Armour, The Marionette

Special Rules: Eye of The Gods, Sorcerer of Elazar, Deamonic Patron, Insane Puppeteer


Now WoC players and the eagle-eyed amongst you may have worked out already but this character is just a perfectly legal build of chaos sorcerer. I've just re-written his background and rules in a different order to create this character. He is in fact:

Chaos Sorcerer
Mark of Slaanesh
Level 2 Wizard
Infernal Puppet
Bronze Armour of Zhrakk
Conjoined Homunculus

He's a rather useful support wizard and I'm looking forward to getting a mini to represent him finished. It's a rather ambitious conversion (well by my standards any way) so I'm hoping it will turn out alright. Any feedback you have on what I've written here would be greatly received as this is just a first draft and corrections are almost certainly going to be needed.

Sorcerer of Slaanesh

I've started work on the Slaaneshi Sorcerer early. I'm going to keep this one fairly close to my chest until he's finished then will show the WIP pics if people are interested in seeing them. I plan on entering this guy into a painting competition being held by my gaming club so want to try and do a really good job on him.
I have all of his fluff and background written out. So I'm going to be a tease and post just the first sentence of his description here for now.

Once a great performer in the Altdorf theatre, his true name since forgotten.

Of course, keeping an eye on my Twitter Tweets might provide some more snippets!

On a completely unrelated note, I recently came by this fab old mini.



I always wanted one back in the day when I had an undead army and always wanted this fella in there. I've purposely left out his name here as I'm curious to see how many people remember this mini!
Haven't decided what I'm going to do with him yet. Whether just to build him up and paint him as is or convert him for my chaos army. He does after all carry the Chaos Runesword...

The Hellcannon

I've finished the Hellcannon. Sadly the same cannot be said of the crew!

Technically speaking I haven't finished putting the Hellcannon together. I hate the weird animal skull mouth thing and so didn't put it on but haven't done anything with the cannon frame where the chains would normally go to hold the skull. I'm going to leave these as they are for the minute as it doesn't look glaringly wrong and I want to make sure I get it right so I might come back to that when I've done the other Hellcannon to get a unified look for them or something.
The base is 100 x 100mm. In theory the Hellcannon is meant to go on a 80 x 100mm base (the largest in Warhammer) but it doesn't actually fit on that size base if you want to use the chains etc. So instead I used a 100 x 100mm movement tray (I figure against anyone who has a problem with the base size I can just pop one of the Chaos Dwarf crew in the corner to take up the spare 20mm). I filled the recessed middle with cardboard cut to size and coated in pva glue. I used green stuff to fill the gaps between the tray's rim and the cardboard and to try and create a shape for the snow going over the edges. Then it was just a case of painting it and flocking it. I decided not to put the flock down behind the cannon's furnace. I'm not sure how well you can glean that from the photos but I figured any snow next to that heat would have melted if the cannon had been there for any length of time. Instead I've painted this a mucky brown and glossed it to try and make it look wet from the snow. If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve this effect I'd love to hear them.

Anyhow. Please comment, criticise, or make any suggestions you'd like, I'd be extremely grateful to hear them.

Hellcannon - Still WIP

Another WIP picture of the Hellcannon. I've gotten the wheels on but there's still a fair bit to do yet and I still have to make the base for it (and I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do for that!).
Sadly, the picture isn't brilliant as it's rather dull day here and I've taken about 15 pics and this was the only one that came out vaguely ok and this is far, far from perfect.
To keep with the organic theme I've painted all of the tubing to be like arteries and brought fleshy colours in where I can, also have lots of gold to tie in the metallics with the rest of my army. I'm quite pleased with how its progressing and I'm still on target for the first ToEMP deadline (just!).
Anyway, I'd really love some feedback, critique, suggestions etc.

A Tale of Even More Painters

I've decided to join 73rd's A Tale of Even More Painters with the Devotees of Elazar. Now the first deadline for this is 17th and 73rd is rather kindly allowing me to complete my Hellcannon for this first deadline. The task (and this is something of a warmup) is to paint 75 points for this week. The Hellcannon is 205 so will soundly beat that amount but I doubt I'd have enough time to get anything else finished before then. I'm going to have to work my proverbial socks off to get it done for Monday but I reckon I can manage it (tune in Monday to see if that turns out to be more foolish bravado than anything else!). To have a look at the Tale click the logo above and you'll be taken to 73rd's blog 'The Unforgiven Angels'. There you can read a lot more information about the Tale than I've just given you and see the great blogs of the other masochists who've joined the self flagellation!
P.S. Check out 73rd's Wood Elf blog too - The Whispering Woods linked from the above. He has a brilliant tutorial on creating bow strings that I have bookmarked should I move onto another fantasy army that actually gets to use them!

Amador - More campaign fluff

Amador fought a battle against a Bretonnian army to take control of the Shrine that Gaizka had been defeated trying to capture from its then Skaven owners. Amador won the battle but was taken as a casualty when a unit of Grail Knights charged into the front of his warrior bodyguard and a unit of Knights Errant managed to clip the units rear with its overrun. The Warriors broke with Amador (despite the carnage that Amador unleashed in a challenge with the Knight Errant champion). Anyway, I wrote this short bit of fluff.

Amador cuffed one of the tribesmen aside furiously. His victory should have been glorious but it had been sullied and now he was raging. He’d returned to the shrine that had seen Gaizka’s defeat to find the ratmen had been routed by a band of Bretonnian Knights, and the witch that led them. During the course of the battle his bodyguard had been outmanoeuvred by the cavaliers and in the carnage that followed he’d been unhorsed. Not before taking the head of some young Knight who fancied himself a hero though. Amador had pulled himself from the dead to see his men cutting down the last of the Knights.
“Did we take any prisoners?” He demanded of no one in particular. A chieftain dared to face his lord’s anger.
“Just the witch,” he answered unsure if that news would be perceived as good or bad.
In an instant Amador’s demeanour changed, his anger cooling to an icy malice.
“Bring her to me,” Amador replied his voice little more than a whisper and he walked off towards the shrine.

The altar of the shrine was all that remained now, the stone that had protected it from the elements had been taken away, presumably by the ratmen. The marble slab was smooth except for a gold filled carving of Loesh the Serpent along its top. Some amongst the tribes knew Loesh as Shornaal and others as Slaanesh but they all paid homage to the same god, though they were servants of Elazar primarily.

Amador turned as two tribesmen approached, dragging a woman along the ground by her arms. The tribesmen wore fierce scowls. Clearly, it had been they who had captured her so in truth she belonged to them but they’d be fools to challenge Amador’s will here. They threw the woman down in front of Amador and turned to walk away. Amador stepped after them, drawing his sword as he did so. Their snub had been petty and subtle but Amador would not let it go unpunished. He’d behead one before either had noticed he followed them. The second spun low to avoid a swipe of Amador’s sword but was too slow to avoid the boot that connected with his face, shattering bone into his skull and killing him in an instant.

Amador turned is attention back to the Bretonnian witch who’d pulled herself up onto her arms but she was too battered and bruised to make it up onto her feet.
Amador circled around her and she stared up at him defiantly. Underneath the bruises and cuts she was probably quite attractive but her auburn hair was matted with blood and strewn with grass and she looked more like a wild creature.
Amador cruelly kicked her arms out from under her and the leering smile on his skull helm matched the one of his scarred face beneath.
“Chain her to my standard,” Amador ordered with a roar. “She will make a fine gift to Loesh!”

*

Amador leapt atop the altar, the standard had been raised there and the witch was chained to the circle and crescent cross. She’d been stripped of her clothing and her dignity but still she stared back at Amador with defiant eyes.
“Blessed Loesh, accept this witch as my gift to you!” he roared to the skies as he pulled a knife from his belt. “May her flesh and her soul sate your hunger!”
He dragged the blade across her neck cutting deep into the flesh and then stepped down from the altar. Her flowing blood quickly filled the recessed carving of the serpent upon the altar. Amador knew that with this offering, his army would be blessed in the battles to come.

The Casualties of Elazar

Feels like an appropriate rename after the tournament on Sunday 2nd (Yes it's taken me this long to post this!)
It was the Eric Daley Memorial Tournament. Held in honour of a member of my gaming club who sadly passed away in May. Money raised went to the Freeman's Hospital so it was all for a very good cause.

Just going to do a quick run down of my three games as I don't have the patience to write full battle reports for all 3.

The army list I took was as follows:

Elazar The Glorified
Daemon Prince
Mark of Slaanesh
Level 4 Wizard
Fury of the Blood God
Diabolic Splendour

Endika Fleshtearer
Exalted Hero
Mark of Slaanesh
Steed of Slaanesh
Flail
Shield
Collar of Khorne
Bloodcurdling Roar

Gaizka The Warped
Sorcerer
Mark of Slaanesh
Level 2 Wizard
Talisman of Protection
Infernal Puppet
Conjoined Homunculus

10 Warriors
Mark of Slaanesh
Full Command
Rapturous Standard
Additional Hand Weapons

10 Warriors
Mark of Slaanesh
Full Command
Great Weapons

15 Marauders
Mark of Slaanesh
Full Command
Great Weapons
Shields
Light Armour

5 Marauder Horsemen
Mark of Slaanesh
Musician
Flails
Throwing Axes

5 Warhounds

5 Warhounds

6 Chaos Knights
Mark of Slaanesh
Musician & Standard Bearer
Blasted Standard

Hellcannon

Hellcannon

My first game of the day was against a Skarsnik led Night Goblin army. I knew it was going to be a hard day when my 1 of the Hellcannons, the Daemon Prince, the unit of Warriors with ADHW and Gaizka were delayed at the start of the battle by Skarsnik's special rule. This had quite an impact as it put both of my wizards out of range for all of the magic for the first turn and left the warriors with too much ground to cover against a static Night Goblin army. My opponent had 2 Spear Chuckas, 2 Rock Lobbas and 2 Doomdiver Catapults. There was a hill on my left flank that I sent my Marauder Horsemen and Endika around to try and flank the warmachines (and the army) and Elazar went this way too. The enemy 'artillery' did a very good job of neutralising my Hellcannons early on which dropped a lot of points. Endika got into the flank and took out 1 of each type of warmachine by himself. Elazar caused some widespread terror and panic checks and with Ecstatic Seizures was wiping out Night Goblins by the dozen but there were just too many of them and with Skarsnik's leadership they were proving hard to budge. The fanatics caused absolute carnage amongst my troops as well, these fanatics seemed cold and calculating, picking their targets and making sure they hit them! Eventually Elazar was taken out by the combined magic of the 3 shamans and the shooting of the remaining warmachines when they could catch sight of him. Endika died in a challenge with Skarsnik (only having 1 wound left by the time he reached him). Gaizka survived the whole battle. He didn't get a chance to do a great deal but he did manage to get Ecstatic Seizures off as the last action of the battle on a unit of 43 Night Goblins and Skarsnik. The carnage that caused was hillarious but nowhere near enough for me to salvage the game.

My second game was against a Empire cavalry army with an arch lector on the pope mobile at its head and a steam tank. My reporting on this battle will be as short as the battle itself. The combination of some downright awful dice rolling and some bold moves by my opponent saw my army get absolutely demolished. It started badly with Endika challenging the arch lector who had van Horstman's Speculum. An empire captain with that spell stealing casket (the name of which escapes me) stole both of Gaizka's spells before he'd had any real impact on the game. 1 Hellcannon got bogged down in an unwinnable combat against the Arch Lector who kept rehealing and the other rampaged into a unit of Knights, a Steam Tank and a mercenary giant!
My chaos Knights looked as if they might salvage something when they managed to get the charge on a unit of White Wolf Knights. I was outnumbered and the enemy had a rank and a battle standard so I lost the combat by 1 after causing a few wounds on them and rolled a double 6 for my breaktest followed by a 4 for my flee roll. Epic fail! Elazar did no better being shot to pieces by two units of pistoliers before doing anything of any real worth himself. A short, painful game. After this I knew I was just playing for pride in my final game.

My last game was against a Dark Elf army. I really enjoyed this battle and it proved to be a thoroughly brutal affair. The two Hellcannons really made up for the previously poor performances and took out a nice portion of the Dark Elf army between them. Elazar didn't do spectacularly, I overreached him a little and then a unit of shades rolled an unholy number of 6s when shooting at him so he ended up dying rather ingloriously. My chaos Knights spent most of the game feinting and weaving with the Dark Elf Cold One Knights and thanks to Endika and his Marauder Horsemen baiting the Dark Elves the Chaos Knights managed to get a flank charge. At this point the combat should have been a formality in my mind but the Dark Elves had an asf banner and a battle standard bearer to boot. The bsb was on the flank I'd charged and struck first causing 2 wounds and I rolled 2 1s for armour saves. This left me with 1 Knight to fight back and although he managed to cause a wound the advantage of the flank charge had been lost and the Dark Elves won the combat. Endika repositioned his horsemen and charged into the Dark Elf Knights' flank when they'd turned to face the chaos Knights but this didn't prove enough to tip the scales and the combat dragged on. Eventually I won it but it kept my two cavalry units tied up for a very long time. I got quite lucky with the 2 sorceresses miscasting a few times so Gaizka's puppet came in handy. I managed to kill 1 thanks to the puppet and a Hellcannon ate the other. The Dark Elf Hydra though proved to be a major player. He took out one Hellcannon then with the help of the dead Sorceress' pegasus and a unit of Black Guard took out my remaining Warriors. This battle saw me pick up the most points and I did a game against a tough opponent and with both of our troops hellbent on spilling blood!

So all in all, my army finished 13th out of 14 so very unspectacular but I had a really fun day and learnt a lot about my army to boot!

Hellcannon WIP

So I've started on the first hellcannon and have a couple of very early WIP shots just to show what the idea is with this first one. (My partner took the second photo and insisted I post it here. It's amazing the difference in colour the camera has made between two pictures taken in similar conditions just on a different desk!)





The two Hellcannons are going to be quite different. I want this one to have a more organic scheme and go for a more machine like scheme for the next one.

Still have a lot of work to do on this including making a base for it!

Here's a quick overview of my plan for the Tale of Fantasy Painters -

The List:

Characters:
Sorcerer 195
Sorcerer 170
Sorcerer 170

Core:
10 Warriors w/ Additional Hand Weapons 210
12 Warriors w/ Halberds 244
15 Marauderds 120
5 Marauder Horsemen 106
10 Warhounds 60

Special:
6 Chaos Knights 300

Rare:
Hellcannon 205
Hellcannon 205
Warshrine 140

Total Points: 2125
I know that's more than necessary but I think we all know that I probably won't get all of that painted as planned!

The Plan:
Roughly as follows.

Month 1 Hellcannon (205)
Month 2 Sorcerer (195) [400]
Month 3 10 Warriors w/ AHW (210) [610]
Month 4 Sorcerer & 5 Warhounds (200) [810]
Month 5 Hellcannon (205) [1015]
Month 6 Warshrine & 5 Warhounds (170) [1185]
Month 7 15 Marauders & 5 Marauder Horsemen (226) [1411]
Month 8 6 Chaos Knights (300) [1711]
Month 9 12 Warriors w/ Halberds (244) [1955]
Month 10 Sorcerer (170) [2125]